With the days of frequent spring rain long gone, Pope County is now under a burn ban.

“We don’t officially have a drought in the state yet but that may be coming soon,” John Lewis, Little Rock National Weather Service meteorologist, said. “We haven’t had a lot of rain lately and it doesn’t look like we have a lot of rain coming.”

Lewis said the lack of rain has caused vegetation to dry out, which leads to an increase in the number of wildfires.

“We get wildfire numbers every day,” Lewis said. “There weren’t very many in May when we were getting rain. Now we’ve definitely noticed more incidents of wildfires.”

Lee Williams, with the Arkansas Forestry Commission, said the state isn’t in a really bad place with fires yet, but that it’s headed that way if the lack of rain continues.

“We are at the lowest number of fires for the first six months of a year than we have been for a long, long time,” Williams said. “The fire danger is picking up. If we don’t get rain we will probably be in high fire danger by late July.”

Williams said the state is currently in moderate category of fire danger.

One look at the forecast will confirm that the heat will remain for the foreseeable future.

“For the next couple of days it’s going to be hot,” Lewis said. “But we have a front coming through so we’ll be cooling off a little, if you call 90 degrees cool.”

Even though the days are hot, Lewis said that the cooler temperatures in comparison to last year are what have saved the area from drought so far.

“This year, we’re drying out more slowly,” he said.

Despite the rate, drying is still occurring and a drought isn’t far away if the area doesn’t receive rain soon.

If you have observed changes that drought has brought to your crops, garden, well, wildlife, etc., please share your observations at the Drought Impact Reporter at droughtreporter.unl.edu and click on Submit a Report above the map. The Drought Impact Reporter, maintained by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is a collection of drought impacts for a variety of sectors to monitor drought damage across the U.S. Just click on Add A Drought Impact at the top of the page and write a brief description of the way drought has affected your area.